Science: Champion Laggard

Last December a lungfish from a pond in British East Africa was placed in a large tin can filled with wet mud. This creature, something like a catfish, something like a small eel, struggled through the mud to the top of the can occasionally to breathe air; but as the mud dried and hardened, the lungfish was held fast at the bottom. Six months later, the can reached its destination, a biological supply house in Chicago. The can was opened, the cylindrical mold of dried mud delicately picked away, the lungfish removed. It was alive. The fish, gaunt from its fast,...